Overview Dashboard

This dashboard was created so anyone looking at the file would be able to get a quick understanding of what was going on at a country level, as well as seeing how counties were performing in terms of confirmed cases per county, cases per 100,000, and 14-day incidence rates.

In order to calculate the 14-day incidence rates, daily confirmed Covid cases, and daily population proportion Covid cases, I wrote individual for loops to calculate each (see .rmd file).

Maps

Incidence rates before and after countrywide lockdown Oct-Dec

During the project, there was a country-wide lockdown, as incidence rates were significantly increasing in most counties across Ireland. To illustrate the effectiveness of Level 5 lockdowns, where inter-county travel is not permitted, I created an interactive map that shows the incidence rates before and after the country-wide lockdown.

  • Lockdown start: 21st October 2020
  • Lockdown end: 2nd December 2020

From the maps we can clearly see that the lockdown has had a significant effect across the country, in particular in County Cavan, which had the highest incidence rates per 100,000 in the country.

Local Lockdowns

Are local lockdowns effective at decreasing the 14-day incidence rates of Covid-19?

During 2020, there were 7 different counties that had local lockdowns introduced, as the incidence rates in these counties were significantly higher than in other regions. These counties can be divided into groups as follows:

  • Midlands: Kildare, Laois, Offaly
  • Dublin
  • Border counties: Donegal, Cavan, Monaghan

Hypothesis Test
\(H_0 =\) local lockdowns do not have an effect on the incidence rate
\(H_a =\) the incidence rate decreases after the local lockdown is introduced

Conclusion
The results of the hypothesis tests for all counties confirm that we should reject the null hypothesis in favour of the alternative - the incidence rate decreases after the local lockdown is introduced. From the plots we can see that the local lockdowns have been most effective in the Midlands. In Dublin and the border counties, local lockdowns have managed to slow down the increase in incidence rate, but country-wide lockdowns were needed to have a singificant effect.

Plots
Incidence rates by county vs. date with markers for lockdown starts/ends
- Red start/end of local lockdown
- Magenta start Level 3 lockdown
- Cyan start Level 4 lockdown
- Blue start/end of country-wide lockdown

Midlands

##               Kildare         Laois        Offaly
## t-stat  -9.451355e+00 -4.958555e+00 -6.239913e+00
## p-value  1.647449e-10  1.553069e-05  4.810068e-07

Dublin

##             Dublin L3
## t-stat  -4.117565e+01
## p-value  6.721410e-27

Border Counties

##            Donegal L3    Donegal L4   Cavan L4 Monaghan L4
## t-stat  -2.194886e+01 -3.4922286031 -2.0769206 -2.41517400
## p-value  1.746087e-19  0.0008043232  0.0235501  0.01125267